Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Femisapien/EMA: A Great Robot Concept Still Waiting For Success

Every robot designer loves their own creations, at least at thebeginning, and they often find it difficult to understand why otherpeople aren’t as enraptured with the beauty and wonder of the robotthey gave birth to. Still, at the end of the day the bottom line is tocreate products that customers relate to enough that they feelcompelled to open their wallets and give us their hard earned cash orplastic.

If we’re really lucky, and really creative, then we can repeat theprocess over and over again, using the profits from this productgeneration to build the next one. And, our customers will be sodelighted with our products that they will automatically come back tobuy more and more.

That being said, good robots, sometimes really excellent robots,sometimes fail to take off and become best sellers. An example is “EMA”(Eternal Maiden Actualization). EMA was originally developed by WowWeeas the first female addition to their extremely popular Robosapienrobot series, and sold in the US and Europe as the “Femisapien”.

Sega Toys did an OEM deal to import, repackage, and market theFemisapien under their own label and renamed the robot “EMA”. Theworld-wide press coverage at the time frequently mis-stated that EMAwas a new Japanese creation, playing off the “robot-crazy Japanese”stereotype.

Femisapien/EMA incorporated a unique human/robot interface with theuser controlling the robot by physically touching (caressing?)different parts of the robots body. Tilt EMA’s head and press down,then EMA would break into song and perform a short demo dance routine.Lift her arm, and move her hand somewhat like a joy stick, and EMAwould follow you around. The robot also included a number of sensors toenhance the interaction and play value.

As innovative and advanced as EMA’s user interface was, it still wasn’tintuitive for the usual customer. People found it difficult to wraptheir heads around the user interface, primarily we believe because itwas so innovative and non-standard. Had they been willing to invest thetime and effort to get proficient with the interface, then EMA had alot to offer. Unfortunately most customers aren’t willing to spendhours or days trying to figure out a new toy, no matter how great thetechnology or interface might be.

Hoping to open the world of robotics to a virtually untapped market,WowWee’s original target audience was young girls, and hoped that theFemisapien would instantly bond with them. Trying to avoid thetraditional RC type remote control concepts, WowWee replaced them withthe touchy/feely approach that turned out to be even harder forcustomers to understand and adopt.

Bringing the robot to the Japanese market, Sega Toys appears to haveretargeted it towards young male robot ‘otaku’ who would couldn’t livewith out their own personal robot ‘maiden’. And, they priced theproduct at almost double the US price, too expensive for the casualcustomer just looking for a cheap robot toy, and too few features forcustomers looking for fully functional humanoid robotics. Neither fishnor fowl, and with a difficult to grok user interface, EMA is gatheringdust on store shelves here inspite of considerable price discounting byretailers trying to clear out slow or non-moving inventory.

It’s really a shame. We like Femisapien/EMA a lot. Our Femisapien(US version) occupies a prime spot in our living room and is frequentlythe center of attraction at our parties and social gatherings. We evenslip it into our backpack to show off at meetings or training sessions.

Hopefully WowWee, Sega Toys, and other robot toy manufacturers willlearn from the Femisapien/EMA experience, and will improve on therobot’s groundbreaking approach. Many of the robot’s concepts should beadopted and integrated into follow-on, or next generation, products.